The problems of addiction, caused by agents such as heroin, methadone or alcohol, in contemporary American society are well known and numerous. In addition to problems experienced by the individual addict, for example, physical problems caused by dietary deficiencies, emotional problems caused by inability to work or maintain stable family relationships, the addiction inflicts costs borne by the entire society in several forms, including crimes resulting from illegal attempts to obtain money needed to support the addiction and addiction caused absenteeism from work.
Treatment of these addictions leading to a permanent cure has heretofore been either ineffective or time-consuming and slow, as, for example, individual or group psychotherapy. Some types of treatment, such as methadone treatment of heroin addiction, have simply failed since methadone substitutes one drug for another. All types of treatment have high relapse percentages after cessation of therapy. For any type of treatment, it is desirable that the beneficial effects of the treatment last for a long time period and be easily achieved and maintained so that the entire treatment does not have to be repeated.
Treatment begins with detoxification of the addiction. The detoxification process is often painful and slow for addicts and the painfulness of the process often deters addicts from initiating a course of treatment leading to a complete cure. The effectiveness of any currently existing treatment program would thus be enhanced if a rapid and painless method were available to detoxify the addict and then continue treatment leading to a longer term cure of the addiction.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a drug-free method for treating addictions.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a method that is effective for a long time period.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide such a method that is non-addictive.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for painlessly and rapidly detoxifying addicts.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide apparatus for the treatment of addictions.